Marked by Grief

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 257, Marked by Grief.

"And the LORD said to him, 'Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.'" Ezekiel 9:4.

This is one of the most tense moments in the whole book of Ezekiel. Jerusalem is about to receive God's judgment for the idolatry and violence that have spread through the city. But before any judgment falls, God does something surprising: He sends a messenger to pass through the city first — not to punish, but to mark. To mark whom?

Notice carefully: it isn't the brave ones who physically fought the evil. It isn't the ones who organized resistance or gave a public speech against the corruption. It's the ones who sigh. Who groan. People whose hearts genuinely ached at what they saw around them — and who probably often felt like that grief changed nothing.

But God sees that grief. He does not overlook someone who is quietly afflicted. And notice where these men were located — inside the city, surrounded by the same abominations, breathing the same corrupted air as everyone else. The mark did not come because they were isolated, protected, far from the evil. It came because, even in the middle of it, they refused to grow numb to it.

That is striking when you stop to think about it. Because the easiest thing, when evil is everywhere, is for the heart to slowly grow calloused. You see the same injustice repeated so many times that it stops hurting. It becomes scenery. It becomes normal. And God, in this text, is saying: I see the one who did not let that happen. I see the one who still groans.

God distinguishes hearts in the middle of the same crowd. He does not look at clothing, social standing, or who was physically closer or farther from the sin. He looks within. And on that day, the ones whose hearts were broken over the evil around them were the ones who received protection before judgment reached the city.

That leads me to ask you, gently: do you still allow yourself to feel sorrow over injustice, or have you grown so used to it that it slides right past you? Because in a world that increasingly normalizes what is wrong, keeping a sensitive heart is not weakness. It is exactly the mark God recognizes and protects.

So today, I want to invite you not to suppress that legitimate grief. If something around you has been troubling you — an injustice, a behavior, a situation that wounds what you know is right — don't let it become routine. Bring it to God in prayer. Let your heart groan before Him, instead of simply learning to live with it in silence.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.